Seoul Tomorrow! Booked Asiana & Air China Business Class to HK

In typical style I am 50% planning, 50% impulsive or pressured last minute decisions. I am staying in Kyoto but time is marching on before my Virgin Atlantic flight to London departs from Hong Kong. Alas they no longer fly from Tokyo! There were many great options to get down to Hong Kong. I had initially considered ANA from Tottori via Haneda but now Cathay Pacific First Class direct from Osaka Kansai. There were also flights departing from the other Osaka region airports.

Single oneway fares in this region are often well overpriced and there were plenty of award options. If not going direct I’d prefer to get greater perceived value by going reasonably indirect. Star Alliance options looked the best with cheap intra-regional awards and routing through China or Taiwan. It had been a long time since I stepped foot in both Beijing and Taipei. Even better would be getting two transits / three flights! EVA would have been nice although I was happy for Japanese domestic connections too.

After a couple calls to reservations and looking at the usual websites (ANA, Aeroplan, Life Miles) for availability and routes I found something even better. Flights through Seoul on Asiana not only had long-haul configurations but also gave me a chance to visit friends in Korea! Even better Asiana flights to Hong Kong had First Class available on either a 747 or A380! Well that’s exciting. Sadly the timings meant either a choice of an awesome First Class experience with a brief transit or business class with enough time to get out of the airport. Not being allowed to stopover, with the latter won out. I first had to have *that* conversation to say “hey, I’m flying to your country tomorrow, are you free?” before booking.

A few more calls and I found from Seoul to Hong Kong an option through Beijing. The negative: my longest flight would be Air China on an average product, positives: still two two-hour Asiana flights with long-haul configurations, a 23.5 hour transit in Seoul (just not a stopover), all good timed day flights and finally somehow the extra flight made the taxes drop dramatically.

From

To

Airline

Plane

Depart

Arrive

Osaka (KIX)

Seoul (ICN)

Asiana

B777-200ER

12:50

14:40

Seoul (ICN)

Beijing (PEK)

Asiana

A330-300

14:10

15:10

Beijing (PEK)

HK (HKG)

Air China

A321

17:30

21:05

All perfect timing, leaving a 2:20 transit time for my Virgin Atlantic booking departing Hong Kong. Once ticketing comes through I’m free to online check-in, ready to appear for the flight tomorrow.

I get a response from Seoul… such late notice 😅 but great! There is a airport bus no.6011 and it goes my university, meet you there!